When the wife reported higher marital satisfaction, the percent of time the couple was awake or asleep at the same time was greater.
To reach this conclusion, researchers studied 46 couples who completed relationship assessments.
Objective sleep data also were gathered over a 10-day period.
"The sleep of married couples is more in sync on a minute-by-minute basis than the sleep of random individuals," Gunn noted.
"This suggests that our sleep patterns are regulated not only by when we sleep, but also by with whom we sleep," she said.
The research was published online in the journal Sleep.
